An Ode to Hardcore…
1996 was an important year in GCode lore. It was the first title of Mike’s second Threepeat after his baseball sabbatical. Hip-hop delivered classics like It Was Written by Nas, ATLiens by Outkast and Hell on Earth by Mobb Deep. And I graduated from Holy Spirit High School. The year I turned 18, will forever hold an important place in my heart, mind and imagination. I’d be lying if I didn’t share that it seems impossible this was thirty years ago.
Seeing Jay-Z sell out Yankee Stadium for a weekend in celebration of the thirty year milestone since the release of his epic, classic debut, Reasonable Doubt, I realized there was another massive anniversary on deck. One far less significant in mainstream pop culture, but one that had no less impact on me than Hov’s nearly flawless rookie offering. 1996 was also the year Dorian Yates released “Blood and Guts”.
“HI, I’m Dorian Yates, 4 times, Mr. Olympia, and this is Blood & Guts, the movie…”
Dorian Yates was a 6 time Mr. Olympia hailing from working class Birmingham in the UK. The reigning best bodybuilder in the world. And one, whose size, strength and conditioning ushered in a new generation in the sport—teetering on the brink of superhumanity. He was such a standout, in large part, because of his approach. His reputation was one of extreme intensity, monastic focus, blue collar work ethic and iconoclastic individuality. Training in an underground bunker halfway around the world, off the grid and under the radar, he was the living antithesis of all things pretty and showy. To share his approach with the rest of the hardcore training population he decided to document a week of his offseason workouts in preparation to defend his title, in the video “Blood & Guts”.
Yates in full color.
1996, as vivid and dynamic a moment in history as it was, was nonetheless seemingly the dark ages technologically speaking compared to where I write this in 2026. In a quaint and beautiful way, in the seminal moments of the internet, 1996 was the twilight of the analog era.
To best illustrate this, I will explain the manner in which I purchased “Blood & Guts”. I first became aware of the video in FLEX Magazine, my favorite bodybuilding periodical and one to which I had a subscription. They ran a feature on B&G, followed by an advertisement that included a portion for you to cut out of the magazine, fill out with your personal information and mail in with your order. I had to write a check for $39.95—I had a Superman check book (yes I’m serious). I had to put that check and the clipping from the magazine into an envelope, buy a postage stamp for 32 cents (which I likely “borrowed” from my Mom) and then take it to the post office in Brigantine, dropping it in the mailbox, basically hoping for the best. There was no such thing as tracking. Maybe one step more modern and reliable than putting a letter in a bottle and throwing it into the Atlantic Ocean. It was destined for Bev Francis’ Powerhouse Gym on Long Island on the outskirts of NYC—the US distributor for the video. Bev’s was a 3 hour trip North from where I lived in suburban Atlantic City. I received the tape 6 weeks later.
Still have the tape, 30 years later…
I say “tape” because we are talking VHS. DVDs were just gaining popularity and often weren’t widely available for more niche content. You needed a VCR. And once you watched it, you needed to rewind. Which is what I did. Every time I trained. For years. It became part of my preworkout routine. Whether by myself or with my bros, Blood and Guts set the tone for an entire era of my training and that of so many of my peers bitten by the iron bug. Watching it regularly became a sacred ritual. I let the tape rock, til the tape popped.
“Fuck the frail shit…”
One of the reasons Blood & Guts made such an impact was that it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. It was black and white, not unlike Scorcese’s boxing classic Raging Bull. In this same way, without so many of the bright colors of every day life, it felt more stark and raw. Beyond some early narration and a brief intro from Dorian, there is no talking other than legendary, highly quotable shouting by his training partner Leroy Davis and the occasional scream or guttural grunt from Yates. The setting, Temple Gym, had no natural light except for that which came down the stairs. It was a brick-walled basement. The video was not instructional, it was observational. It was stripped of all pretence and artifice. It wasn’t flashy or stylized, there was no wardrobe (other than tattered sweats, bandanas, weathered gym shirts and the Jordan 7s Dorian wears) but that in and of itself was a bold fashion statement. The gym was a hallowed, serious place intended for extreme efforts. Not somewhere for outfits intended to fit in or stand out.
The Bandana represents a state of mind.
For guys like me, taught in the school of “more is better” when applied to all of my rigorous athletic training as a kid, Blood & Guts was also eye-opening and educational. The training style was ballistic and aggressive, but also targeted and strategic. Meaning it was efficient. Warm-ups were done to prepare for maximum weights in a very specific rep range. Each top set was to go to failure and beyond at top intensity–Dorian’s Heavy Duty style as 4x Mr Olympia Jay Cutler said was “turning the body inside out”. It was brutal. It took strength and tenacity. And it prioritized precision form executing the most basic exercises. Anything more than would do the job was considered sub-optimal and a waste. The mandate was to annihilate the target muscle group and get out of the gym, beginning the growth process. What this helped me realize was that more wasn’t better, better was better. It is a reminder to this day when I get caught up in the numbers game of sets and reps… We want quality not quantity.
The exercise choices were precise and particular, always emphasizing the meat and potatoes movements but with nuance. His was a four-day split. Chest and Biceps consisted on incline barbell, Hammer Strength chest press, incline DB Flyes and cable crossovers followed by EZ bar curl, incline DB curl and Nautilus machine curls. Back featured Nautilus pullovers, Hammer Strength underhand grip pulldowns, barbell rows, Hammer Strength rows, deadlifts, hyperextensions followed by rear delt work. Leg day was leg extensions, leg press, hack squats, lying leg curls, stiff-legged deadlifts, unilateral leg curls, standing and seated calf raises. Then finally shoulders and triceps was made up of seated smith machine military press, seated DB side lateral raises, one arm cable side lateral raises and dumbbell shrugs. Shoulders was followed by skull-crushers and pushdowns. Each exercise was done with a warmup set or two, followed by an all-out max set that often included forced reps with Leroy’s assistance–both in the form of an expert spot and unhinged screaming.
Pushdowns so heavy they require a weighted dip belt as counter-balance.
I had the blessing of making the pilgrimage to Birmingham in the UK and training at Temple on a few occasions. It was dark and dank and beautiful. You could feel the ambitious ambiance. You could smell the decades of toil. It was electric. The history of blood, sweat and tears shed within those walls was palpable. It was an impossible place to not push yourself to exceed your limits. Training there with good blokes like Eric, Vinny G, Frank, House, Evan, Sunil, Roman, Hoff, Josh, Tom and more makes those experiences all the more special. Walking down that alley… Descending those steep, narrow steps into the subterranean, was a singular, spiritual experience. It was a “temple” for sure.
Blessed to talk about it because I lived it.
On a sojourn with my friends to my hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, I remember training as a teenager. At a Mom and Pop gym there, we encountered two training partners, each as wide as they were tall, training with blistering intensity, outfitted in familiar attire. In distinctly blue collar, Northeast PA accents, one shouted to the other, psyching up for his top set to “Do it like Dorian did it.” Blood & Guts, the mentality, was a guiding philosophy for so many of us who committed their lives to the iron. It was rugged and savage and raw and real in a way that spit in the face of pretty boy “fitness”. It was proof that if a person was willing to push themselves to the brink, and to do so again and again, they could transcend their limits–whether those boundaries were merely physical or of more consequence, like your circumstances or the small town from which you hail–whether that be Birmingham or Brigantine. “C’mon DIESEL!” indeed.
I strongly encourage anyone who never has experienced Blood & Guts (or for those for whom it has been a while) to watch the epic hardcore training opus here and be forever inspired…
Beyond the original, I also want folks to follow a Temple Gym OG and my mate from Birmingham, modern physique culturalist Simon Fan as he pays Blood & Guts proper tribute, alongside the inimitable Leroy Davis here in an awesome training series. I met Simon more than a decade ago working the front desk at Temple. He remains my friend to this day and keeps this hardcore spirit alive…
